Grandson of 1919 Indian massacre survivor translates banned poem

Indian Ambassador to the UAE Navdeep Singh Suri's and BBC journalist Justin Rowlatt's seemingly dissimilar worlds but have a much deeper connection.

When they square off in the corridors of history, one represents the voice of the oppressed and the other the oppressor.

Suri is the grandson of Nanak Singh, who survived the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre and penned a searing poem Khooni Vaisakhi, that was promptly banned by the British.

Rowlatt is the great grandson of Sir Sydney Taylor Rowlatt, the British judge who drafted the infamous Rowlatt Act of 1919 that gave the British unlimited power to imprison Indians without trial on charges of sedition.

On the centenary of Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Suri who is currently the Indian Ambassador to the UAE, has translated Khooni Vaishaki to English. The UAE launch of the book, published by Harper Collins, was held at the New York University in Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) on Thursday and was attended by Rowlatt. Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Tolerance was the chief guest at the UAE launch of 'Khooni Vaisakhi'.

The interaction between Suri and Rowlatt turned out to be an honest conversation between pride and guilt with the essential grace of second generation refinement. "An apology is not something you wrench out of somebody. It has to be voluntary and something that comes from within you," said Suri describing the collective Indian feeling that Britain owes India an unconditional apology for the colonial crimes it committed.

Rowlatt unreluctantly owned up the guilt of his country's tyrannical past that was "terribly, terribly wrong". "They (Britain) have come so close to apologising many times but they weren't been able to. They must have thought very deeply about it and realised you cannot apologise for individual massacres. Where do you begin from because there are so many.

"What Britain needs to do is to come to terms with its own history. and engage with its history and acknowledge the imperial crimes," said Rowlatt, a former South Asian BBC Correspondent.

In an essay titled 'The Sins of the Great Grandfather', which he has contributed to the book, Rowlatt said he was appalled that his great grandfather was honoured with a Knighthood for drafting the oppressive law.

Stopping short of an apology in the House of Commons, the British prime minister, Theresa May, said that the tragic shooting of innocents on April 13, 1919, was a shameful scar on the British Indian history.

The banned poem was rediscovered by Suri's father after many years. But translating a poem that is rich in rhymes, posed its own difficulties to Suri. "The biggest challenge I faced was to capture the cadence of the lines when staying true to the text."

Suri said in his first draft he stick to the advice that content is king, and tried a free verse. But he said the Robert Frost argument that writing poetry without a formal structure is like playing tennis without a net "somehow got stuck up in my head".

Suri said he is glad that the English translation will put the literary work of his grandfather to a global audience. "Its release in India has attracted exceptional media and public interest and many have commented on the timeless quality of its message."

anjana@khaleejtimes.com

• Abu Dhabi
• India